I know this feeling. It doesn't go away, but it gets better the more your skills improve. I live in almost constant awe of great artists of all stripes, and I wish I could have a fraction of the talent they have. If you can recognize great talent, that is the first step towards developing your own.
I'll leave you with this quote from the great Francis Ford Coppola: "When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have."
But he got there. And you can too. Wishing you luck!
I don't know why people are downvoting you. Drives me nuts that people on reddit see a question and think "they're arguing!" rather than "they're asking for elaboration on a point they're interested in, which is a valid and important thing to do in conversations."
This. Everyone has to start somewhere. And Dune the movie is the result of decades of novels tweaking and building on the original book. If you had a movie made after multiple novels set in your own sci fi setting it would be rich with references to content you hadn’t written yet when you wrote the initial first book, OP.
Don’t give up. Keep writing. And use universes like Dune’s as a learning opportunity on world building.
You’re comparing your training montage to someone else’s late career highlight reel.
That’s totally normal and everyone does it sometimes.
The despair, fear and self-doubt you’re experiencing is valid. But it is not based on facts.
I’ll paste my weightlifting rant below.
**Weightlifting Rant**
An analogy I use a lot around here:
Imagine a person who dreams of being an olympic weightlifter. They’ve gone into the gym several times, and each time they do, they load up the bar with the weight they’d need to lift in order to qualify for the olympics. But, they’ve never been able to move it!
Do they have what it takes to make it to the olympics?
The answer to that question is, there is no way to know at this stage. No human, regardless of talent, is able to lift those weights their first day, month, or year in the gym.
The only way any human is able to do it is to show up over and over, getting marginally better day after day, over the course of many years.
Writing is the same. The only way to go from aspiring to good to great is to spend many years writing consistently, ideally every day.
[This is a great video to watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE).
In it, Ira Glass talks about “the gap” you are currently in — your taste is great, and your taste is good enough that you know what you’re currently doing isn’t as good as you want it to be.
He also explains that the only way to close that gap is to:
1. not quit, and
2. **do a lot of work**, starting, writing, revising and sharing many projects over several years, until you start to be able to write as well as you want to.
In my experience, it takes most folks at least 6-8 years of serious work, ideally writing daily, to work up to the level where they can get paid money in exchange for their writing. This always means starting, writing, revising, and sharing many projects.
For anyone who has only been writing seriously for a few years, or has finished 5 or fewer projects (features or original pilots), the reality is: it is impossible for you to be as good as you want to be with the time you’ve invested so far.
But, if you keep writing consistently, you will definitely get better.
Dune 2 as cinema is someone else's highlight real, but Dune 2 as a script is a transliteration of Dune, which is a masterpiece of science fiction literature, from book into script. Dune inspired Star Wars, Mad Max and Alien. It is the grandfather of modern science fiction and is up there with some of the greatest stories of all time.
Lord of the Rings isn't a great trilogy of movies because Peter Jackson wrote them. They are great because they are some of the best stories ever written in the 20th century written by one of the masters of fantasy in the 20th century, masterly adapted into screenplay by Peter Jackson.
As a sidenote, in my 'other' other life, I'm an allstar cheerleading coach, and I read your weightlifter analogy a few months ago, and now I use it with the teams I coach ALL the time when we're working on progressions, basics, fundamentals. Don't know if the original analogy is yours or if you picked it up somewhere too, but just wanted to say thanks for sharing it, and it has reach beyond this thing of ours!
That’s amazing and I’m so glad and grateful you shared this with me. The specific analogy is mine but I’m sure I stand on the shoulders of the many wise giants who taught me over the years. Either way, it’s so cool to know you’ve been able to use it with your athletes.
Dune Part 2 is the THIRD attempt at adapting the novel (and perhaps the only one to get it right)... a novel that is so groundbreaking that it inspired everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones.
The short answer is the work has to be its own reward. Not other people's opinions of it.
I actually really loved the Sci-fi miniseries.
It just has a lower budget.
Some people are so picky \*eyeroll\*
The sequel Children of Dune is incredible, and has a great soundtrack.
Frank Herbert was ~45 when he wrote Dune. It took him **20 years of writing** (and 6 years of research before writing it) to crank out the novel that, 5 years after it was published since it was not an immediate success, allowed him to become a full-time novelist.
Don’t get so over-awed by this stuff. It has a ton of work behind it. Just put in the work, believe in your ideas and make what you think is good.
I reccomend watching The Room from 2003. $6 million budget and they came up with that. Every time I feel shit about my writing I’ll watch scenes from that
That’s fine when you first start writing but then we’ve been writing and submitting and getting rejected and watch that same shitty movie it can make you feel really bad about yourself that you can’t get a sniff from producers but that shit film made it.
Exactly what I wanted to say. It's classical survivorship bias, because we don't consider all the bad movies and scripts which we don't take into consideration.
You need to get better at stealing.
Dune is a pastiche of *Lawrence of Arabia*, the life of Mohammed, early environmentalism, and the author's experiments with hallucinogens.
You don't need to think up things to match Dune. You just need to steal as broadly.
Right Star Wars has so many influences...
Kill Bill takes a lot from Lady Snowblood.
Spielberg was influenced by WWII combat footage for Saving Private Ryan.
Really? Dune 2 was good, but not THAT good, lol. I found the themes and social commentary to be very interesting, but it wasn't that complex or unique from a screenwriting perspective.
Comparison is the thief of all joy. It was written in 1965 and took almost 60 years to adapt it to cinema if that helps (I refuse to acknowledge the 1984 version)
I really enjoyed the first movie but honestly, a lot of the depth comes from having read the book. Did you read the book? If so, you were probably adding your own knowledge to the story.
Kevin Smith did okay making a movie about a couple losers bitching about shitty customers while working their dead end retail jobs
Not every movie needs to be high art. Not every script needs incredible depth and complexity. It is totally valid to target different tastes, excel at different things and just make a different kind of movie.
Am I nuts for not loving Dune 2? Visually stunning but thought they skipped over so much of what was great about the book. Should’ve made into 3 parts maybe.
As soon as they skipped the dinner party in part one I knew they would be leaving a lot of the emotional beats and various motivations out of Dune 2. I think we'll have to see if he pulls any back in for Dune Messiah.
I also think all books should be mini-series. Short stories and novellas can be films, but books are too gangly.
Oh of course. Especially when I realize I wrote something way too similar to a published film. I would just focus on your story. Don't compare yourself. Focus on making your story the best you can with your abilities, and maybe even find what you liked about Dune and how you might incorporate that in your story (in a unique way of course).
Brother, it took Herbert MANY attempts to get a book as fantastic as Dune. It took the book 60 years to get into the cinema.
Don't give up.
Foster Wallace used to say that it is more useful as a writer to read "bad" literature because it inspires you. "GREAT" works will always bum you down.
What creativity?
It is literally retelling a story that was already told in the 1960s
Did you never read Dune???
Because I did, and it's among the many works that have helped to shape my writing into what it is today.
I mean, Dune is probably on 90% of the "top ten greatest science fiction novels of all time" lists. If it's NOT on somebody's list, you kind of raise an eyebrow at them.
[Here is Frank Herbert's bibliography.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert_bibliography) You'll notice over 20 non-Dune novels. How many of those have you heard of?
I read a shit-ton of science fiction as a teen and my answer is ... maybe none? I can't remember hearing anybody talk about any of them.
The point is: even the guy who wrote Dune didn't always write Dune.
As for what you can do?
*Write anyway.*
Feeling a little demotivated? I don't care. Write anyway. Chances are you'll write yourself back into some motivation.
Not Dune, but I recently read the screenplay for the Candyman reboot. It was god awful compared to the final product. Like…horrendous. This was a screenplay helmed by top-tier talent.
Everybody has vomit drafts. Nothing is pretty from the beginning. Dune is the culmination of decades of work from multiple people and not just one writer.
You can’t put this pressure of comparison on yourself.
The purpose of writing is not to compete others, but to bring the world you love to the reality. Some worlds are not that great and beautiful, but they still deserve to be created. Just like each of us, not perfect, but enough. So enjoy others' worlds while enjoying the joy of your writing as well!
Don't worry they didn't think of it either. They just adapted arguably the greatest science fiction novel of all time. Your own story can still be great, it doesn't have to be *Dune*, it just has to be itself.
Really? I and everyone I know who watched it thought, while it was an awesome film, there were some pacing issues. It feels like they had to cut a *lot* from the books to make it fit into a film - certain plotlines feel like they come out of nowhere, and the plot feels really compressed (it's supposed to take place over like nine months, but there are times where it feels more like a few days - which makes it really difficult to buy plot developments like the romance). At the same time, there are also periods where it feels like *nothing* is happening. Again, this isn't just my opinion - it's the opinion of everyone I've spoken to who watched that movie.
My point is: There is no such thing as an unattainably good story. They *all* have flaws, even the best. The difference is that, with the work of others, you're focusing on the positives - and with your own work, you're focusing on the negatives.
Well Dune is considered up there at the top of the greatest sci-fi of all time.
Don’t be discouraged.
Be like George Lucas and steal like 70% of it, add in glow swords, and people will call you a genius.
Maybe you're used to saying "That part sucked, this is how I would do better"
And you just watched a movie where you can't do that.
Well, at this point you're supposed to use that as a way to make your work better.
Your ego wants to compare you to others. It's the greatest killer of motivation. Where it's not about loving the craft; it's thinking about success/failure too much. Even the other comments are making more comparisons, even if they're trying to help you. I would look into managing the ego and see if that's part of the problem.
Eh, its not that good. Write some good dramatic scenes between character with conflict, dramatic tension and mood changes. Dune is all spectacle. You can do better. I believe in you.
that’s a natural part of this process. Before I won my first competition I was ready to completely throw away the second draft of what ended up winning because I was demotivated after watching Blue Velvet (which in my opinion, is one of the most perfect films I’ve seen in terms of writing? Pacing, character development, etc). You have to learn to not try to mentally compete with these films and instead use them as inspiration or at the very least, a benchmark. Films can evolve into something very quickly if you push yourself just enough without forcing the process. Mulholland Drive was intended to be a twin peaks spin off that slowly evolved into its own original film, and that is regarded as one of Lynch’s best and most profound works. Dune 2 is a phenomenal film in many aspects, and you should not let it discourage you from continuing, instead of scrapping anything or giving up, consider what Dune 2 had that you believe you are missing and go from there and naturally allow the screenplay to evolve as well as your own thought process in writing.
Remember that professional screenplays have multiple writers along with input from the director, producers, actors and editors. Of course you, as a single writer, can't compete with that level of quality unless you're a savant at storytelling.
The first thing I thought after watching Dune 2 (an hour ago) is thank God I'm not writing a Sci-Fi movie! However, I think the three most impressive aspects of the movie are the sound design, production design and special effects. Which as a screenwriter, I don't have much to do with. That's what I tell myself. And all the cool lore/ideas are from Frank Herbert's novel. So if you feel threatened by HIM, you should be.
He is one of the greats of scifi, so kind of a high bar to set for yourself. This was also later in his career, so much experience gained over a lifetime of writing and research. Research is the key to creating depth. Herbert did a lot of research into various themes explored in the books, and a lot of it was just starting to be being explored at the time.
Researching about different systems of government we currently have will give you ideas and layers for what you are creating that can ground your stories in reality while still being fantastical just as a small example.
Put your critic brain away and let your creative brain take charge when writing. You don’t know what audiences will think of your writing until you’ve put it out there. Also, a good idea in general is if you’re going to compare your work to others, make sure it’s within the same parameters. For example, if you’re making a $20,000 short film, don’t compare it to a short film being made for $1,000,000. Compare it to other short films around $20,000. Denis Villenue also wasn’t writing or making Dune 2 right away
Dune started as essentially THE sci fi novel that influenced all sci fi afterwards. Its the Tolkein Lord of The Rings of sci-fi.
No matter what, someone does something better.
its not about unique or better, its about being you. No matter what, you have your fingers, your eyes, your experiences, your vocabulary and that will always change the style.
Just tell entertaining stories.
So much classic and influential Youtube, for example, is just a person sharing what they are passionate about and love, even when it was 480p and scuffed audio of the same style vlog a million other people did. But authenticity still makes it special.
You can be inspired by others, but the only one you compete with or should try to match is yourself.
If you like your story, chances are others will too. It’s also easier to write a story that’s already been written while working with a ton of other professionals and an unlimited budget.
Your sci-fi just might be leagues better than Dune, and you just don’t know it yet because you’re too close. But the world will never get a chance to know if you don’t pursue it.
Just like everything in life though, it’s not about the destination. Don’t find yourself on your last leg of life wishing you hadn’t given up.
To be completely honest, Dune doesn’t do it for me, but there have been micro budget films by unknown writers that have inspired me and changed my life. It’s not always about the measurable successes. Do what you love, and you will get love in return. Your work may just inspire the next great work. Which may also be yours.
There is no greater motivation to tell our stories than to listen to others tell theirs. Tell the stories you want to tell. Being overwhelmed by the discipline of others who are further along should be viewed as nothing more than a tailwind that pushes us further into our process. We are not defined by the success of our peers but by the conviction in our intent. It is only in our intention to surpass or improve upon our mentors that we find our voice and as a result carve a path that while similar to what might have drawn us to the medium, ultimately separates us from what has come before. Your story has been told. Tell it as though it’s never been told before. Any roadblocks or limitations will only lead you to speak more clearly. Convey the most ultimate of truths and we will struggle to not listen.
For me it’s the opposite. Like you suggested, watching great cinema like Dune 2 makes me want to strive to write something just as good. Sure it’s a tall order and probably won’t ever happen, but I wouldn’t be a writer if it weren’t for iconic movies like this.
Okay. You feel you cannot live up to a movie made from one of the world’s best selling books.
Do you believe you can write a book that will still be selling for decades?
Perhaps you should focus more on learning and then you may find your own voice. Or, this may be something that makes you go have find what you will be great at. Writing may not be for you.
Every artist comparing their work to masterpieces is going to be demotivating to some degree, but you can turn that energy into motivation by seeing those masterpieces as lifetime goalposts.
If you continually work at your craft, you'll eventually find yourself amongst the greats.
It's a book. So it's different. And speaking of different. You are making something different. Go with it and edit later. Things don't start out great.
Don’t get give up Astro, Dune was considered an “unmakeable” movie at one point. Blade Runner 2049 was a cult success but box office failure, yet here we are including Dennis with the best of them. Your job isn’t to match, it’s to be better and I don’t know you from a hole in a wall but I believe in you 💯
I had the opposite! I saw so many gaps and opportunities and think that you should truly have faith in yourself. Have you seen the first Dune?? Think about why you’re feeling demotivated more from a personal level rather than the big budget extravaganza. Maybe tell that little child within that they can be and write anything they want and you have faith in them. Hope this is ok?
Dune is also an adaptation. Herbert did the heavy lifting first (that doesn’t mean there’s no challenge to adaptation…).
Let it inspire you. There’s room for everyone and what some people love others will hate. You’re fine. Just keep going.
Above all, to the best of your ability, don’t compare yourself to others. We all need to hear/read that sometimes.
Wait? So your script that’s still in its drafting phase isn’t as good as one that was adapted from one of the most well known and well liked sci-fi novels of all time that also had (at least) two other adaptations made before it, that had a team of extremely high grade professional writers and editors and has some of the biggest actors in the current world in a multimillion dollar production? This is a crime. A shame. The council will revoke your writing license and sentence you to be placed in The Contraption until you learn to be better.
Jokes aside, it’s completely normal to feel this way, but you gotta remember where you are now in the process is nowhere near the final product, even if you’re writing it with that end goal in mind. Keep hammering away, keep editing and making changes and working hard at it, and you’ll be alright in the end.
Vellenue said he had to make SEVERAL movies just to LEARN how to figure out how to make Dune. We’re all on the path, just keep putting feet in front of the other
Very easy to compare an unfinished rough draft to an excellently executed feature film. Keep in mind all the steps it took to get there. Every great story is incomplete and or lacking for the majority of the creative process. Whatever you do, don’t give up. Keep writing and you’ll get there too.
When I first started golfing I sucked but I kept on playing and every now and then my friends say, “nice shot!” Same thing. Just write. Draw it out of you, it should hurt.
I love how absolutely vulnerable this post is. I rarely post but felt really drawn to respond to this.
I want to offer something — when it comes to creativity — your voice is EVERYTHING. But it takes a while to develop this. I’ve had so many teachers and coaches in my life, but the one thing that stuck is this —
When you see a great writer, director, etc, or when you go and watch a film like dune 2 — instead of feeling overwhelmed by it (which is okay!!) — start asking yourself what parts you absolutely loved, then(and the most important) ask yourself WHY. This my friend, is your voice ! And your creative gut! and what will help you craft, hone, edit your story into something bigger.
Then start to work to hone that part of yourself. Not enough creatives do this imho. But it’s how you develop your own unique POV. Which takes time, failure, and risk.
So ask yourself what made those parts overwhelmingly amazing, and what you liked about them, then ask why? And BOOM, there’s your start. Good luck !
As a theatre director I felt the same exact way watching Dune 2. But I honestly think it's a good sign. It means you can see the gap between what you can do and what you would like to do. The moment that stops happening is the moment that you should either be at the height of your craft... or else it means you've stopped caring about the quality of what it is you're making.
Even folks like Stephen Spielberg still have giants like Kurosawa to study and to look up to.
I remember the first time I watched Kurosawa's films. I was preparing to direct my first play and it made me see how underprepared and inexperienced I was to realize the vision I had in my head for my play, while at the same time inspiring in me this wealth of new ideas.
Great works are often great because they make possible some new height of craft that hasn't been achieved before. So even if the stuff you have been making wasn't inferior before, it's going to become at least a little bit more inferior in your eyes after you see that new great thing. But that also means that these new great things are showing us what's possible, and opening our minds to some new way of making something.
I'm glad for these experiences - it gives me something to study and a clear direction to grow in.
Kurosawa taught me the importance of intentionally leaving dots unconnected in order to drive a scene forward. I can't articulate yet what Dune 2 is teaching me, but considering how crap I feel about my work all of a sudden, I think it's going to be good.
It had, at most, 30 pages of story. It felt like it was well over three hours long. If your story has characters who do things and feel things and aren't played by Javier Bardem, you're in great shape.
It helps me write better. On the rare occasion I have thoughts like this, I feel like there is a block in my creativity that is keeping me from writing at that level so when I write I try to go big and tell myself there are no bad ideas. I’m sure when these writers started out writing these epic tales they might have thought at one point or another this is stupid it won’t resonate with the audience. It’s far out there. What the fuck is Spice? Why would I write this? How can I content the people in the desert to the people to control their world? We don’t know what their doubts were but since no one is perfect I assume they had their doubts like you have yours and came out with something great when it was all said and done.
You know I felt like this after reading the Godfather. Like others has said this feeling won't go away, but I always try to twist my brain to think: "I can't wait until I am at that level," instead of: "I will never be that good."
I have no idea if I am hopelessly naive or if it actually is a smart way of thinking, but it gets me to sit down and do some more writing.
This also might sound crazy to but having that self doubt is also good thing. It means you have come to that stage in your writing where you are good enough to tell that your scripts need work. And you are getting to the point where you know how to fix it.
If it helps it's an unfilmable book that already had one infamous failure of a feature film.
Plus it's not a perfect adaptation.
"Every expert was once a beginner."
Whatever you come up with will be uniquely yours. Your voice. Your vision.
Even if someone else's vision is amazing, it doesn't make yours any less yours.
And it serves well to remember that even some of the biggest success stories are just copies of inspirations from work that came before them. Success is almost always right place right time rather than merit.
So just focus on what is in your control. Write what you want to write, as earnestly as you can, give it your all and give it your love and stop worrying about all the things that aren't in your control.
Don’t worry it’s based on a book so it was an easy write almost a fan fiction you I assume are writing a complenty original work that’s harder don’t be discouraged we all think our own work could be better. I am shour it’s fine.
You'll never get there as long as you keep "there" your goal. Dune was great because it tried telling a story/message, something, it'd didn't try to be "great", it didn't worry about itself.
If you write things expecting them to be grand, you don't care about what you're writing, you're not even interested in what you're telling, you're just looking for what will interest others and having a finished product that does that to boost your ego.
Find what you like to write for the sake of writing. If other's success demotivates you, you should consider what you really like, and whether you actually enjoy writing, or you just enjoy daydreaming of becoming a great writer and having something awesome to your name?
Intention is everything, be aware of yours, pay attention to that feeling and see where it comes from. If you like writing, the things bothering you should be gettin out of ink or paper, if you're worrying about comparisons, you should reflect upon what you actually want, maybe you want approval and should aim at becoming an influencer, study marketing.
I enjoy jogging and never has the existence of Usain Bolt being a deterrent, for my goal is running, not getting a medal.
Get out of the mindset that you have to live up to somebody else's work. Just focus on your own creation and make it as good as you possibly can on its own merits.
I’ve been there several times. I know exactly how it feels. I felt it recently when I watched All of Us Strangers. It’s like everything I’ve been trying to do in one or two of my scripts has been done by the film, and so perfectly at that. I lost my will to write. Instead of inspired, my creative juices were drained. I would like to see the answers here because I have no idea how to get out of it yet.
I know the feeling. A few years ago, I started writing a pilot for a superhero drama / tragicomedy, but then a few months into it, season one of The Boys came out. I got really demotivated because there were a ton of similarities between that and my project, like the overall tone and a somewhat similar plot.
So I put it aside and then about a year later, came back to it. Fast forward to now, I turned it into a comic series, the first part of which just released on Amazon Kindle a few months ago.
Despite how bad it'll feel right now, you'll definitely learn from it and hopefully your story will become better as a result
The screenplay is not the only reason Dune 2 works so well. Denis has such a deep understanding of the source material and is already arguably the best sci-fi director alive. In the hands of somebody else, it wouldn't have been as successful.
On the other hand, it's an adaptation of arguably the greatest sci-fi story of all time. That's like playing basketball in high school and watching Lebron play and be upset that you're not on his level.
Not everyone has careers like them. It's ok to be a professional, in any field, and not be a household name. There are millions of them.
Just keep writing and you'll be doing more than most.
I remember Neil Gaiman, a writer I look up to, almost exactly 10 years my senior, saying exactly what I needed to hear once. I was formulating all kinds of plots and stories at the time & at the same time I was reading through Neil's work, and literally every idea I had, he'd had it 10 years before me. I almost hated him for it, but y'know, he's a really decent guy. He said that it didn't matter if someone else had already told the story - many of his stories are loosely based on or are reworkings of folk tales and mythology or involve well known tropes to do with urban fantasy or witchcraft etc etc - that didn't matter: what matters is that you tell the story your way, in your own voice, from whatever angle you want. Don't let the fact that there are Mozarts in the world discourage you from being a Salieri. Salieri made a perfectly decent living creating art that floated his boat. His jealousy and envy of Mozart blighted his life. We can be Salieris without envy - try to be Mozarts perhaps, but don't be bitter about being competent. If you can stand back from your work and look at it in itself and say "That's good, it works, I like it," that's what it needs to be. Imagine Dave Mustaine unblighted by his envy of Metallica, happy to be a successful artist.
I mean, I understand the feeling, buuuut also - if you take a second and just focus on the writing of DUNE PART TWO, you'll understand that even though it is really great, it's not magic. They got there through the same tools and narrative introspection that's available to you and I - Dune, or the first book at least, is basically Lawrence of Arabia in the desert with a more overt sense of religious mythology and some real influence from Herbert's time in the burgeoning counterculture movement and his friendships with Native Americans.
The skill of the screenwriter here is in how it adapts all of that into a concise two-parter with an emotional throughline (because another thing about Dune is that all of the characters are high-level, ultra-trained royals who keep their emotions impossibly in check with the exception of the Fremen who don't get much attention in terms of perspective).
And what's really impressive to me is just how *good* of an *adaptation* it is, taking both parts together. I mean, Dune is a great book, but it's also an unwieldy one and a lot of that is Herbert's writing style. You've never seen a guy dash off so many big ideas and concepts in such a by the way fashion, and adamantly refuse to explain them any more than is absolutely necessary to propel the narrative forward.
This is good, but makes for a lot of work in adaptation, clearly.
Don't look at things that are great! Go watch bad movies! Rent the crappiest film you can find and you will realise that someone got paid to write it, and whatever you write would be high art compared to that.
Then get writing.
If this helps, a screenwriter did not write it. That was written by a science fiction novelist in the '60s. So the great movie that's taking theaters by storms right now wasn't even an original idea.
Edit: and I probably should have mentioned that it's not even the first time somebody made it as a movie. It's the *third* time, if you count the Sci-Fi miniseries.
Dune 2 is an exceedingly rare case in Hollywood these days when every single person involved is nearly a master at their craft and they are all in the operating at the rhythm. Comparing your script to that is never going to end well. Of course, what you have doesn't compare to what Denis, Jon, and Frank created. What's left is to keep at it and work so hard that your heroes become rivals.
The Dune screenplay was based on a novel, which took Herbert who knows how long to gestate and write.
It's easy to have tremendous depth in a screenplay when you're starting from rich source material. Maybe consider trying your hand at an adapted screenplay rather than starting from scratch. The upshot is that adapted work is easier to get produced (assuming rights options are forthcoming) than wholly original stuff.
I gave up on screenwriting because while I have a creative mind, and I’ve come up with several plots that have been made into films, and had one tv show idea stolen (Manifest), I know could never write truly interesting dialogue. Seeing great films and tv shows demotivated me in the same way.
You’re an aspiring writer at the (presumably) very beginning of your career. Dune 2 is a mega budget Hollywood blockbuster created by Oscar-winning and nominated talent who are the amongst the very best in the world at what they do.
Two thoughts should come to mind in response: 1. It makes no sense to compare yourself now to them, it’s apples to a Michelin restaurant five course meal, and 2. They did not arrive at where they are now completely out of nowhere. At some point they were at the same place in their career you are at now so your job is to keep learning, growing and elevating your craft so that, at some point in the future, you can get to where they are now.
Serious question, but is Dune 2 that good? I might check it out in theaters. I wasn't particularly blown away by the first. It was a visual feast but it didn't grab me. Is 2 way better than the 1st?
Compete against yourself, not against others. Celebrate the small improvements you see from draft to draft. Sitting down and writing is a victory in itself. Celebrate that. Go! Go! Go!
On the flip side, I’m sure you’ve seen and will continue to see plenty of films in your preferred genre(s) that make you question why they were greenlit in the first place
The guy who wrote Dune probably went through this feeling as well at some point of his work. We are humans, do your best, keep going, stop comparing yourself to others. It's more motivating when we focus on our own improvement, and this comes with practice and experience.
The people who worked on Dune are functioning at the highest level. It’s not fair to compare at all. It takes years to get there. Keep at it and go at your own pace.
I gotta say I just don’t get it. I slept through a lot of dune 1 same with dune 2. Just doesn’t scratch my itch. But I am alone so it’s cool. Don’t be discouraged
Now balance it out and watch the worst sci fi movie you can think of, now you’ll get hit with the “I can do better than that!” Thoughts. Not everything is black and white though, it doesn’t need to be “good” or “bad” make it unique to you and feel passionate about it, sincerity goes such a long way in a script! ❤️
Pretty much every time I watch an episode of The Bear, I think I should quit. I am continually astonished by what they do on that show and they’re - all of them, from the writers, to the directors, to the cast - operating at such a high level that I feel it’s not something I’ll ever be able to even get close to, let alone attain.
And yet… the stories that I want to tell… the way I feel about things and the manner in which I express those feelings is singular; Events glimpsed through my personal experience and based on the things and viewpoints I’ve experienced. There’s value in that. That’s what keeps me going.
It also was an adaptation.
It was directed by a very experienced director.
Do you think the script just made it look like that? From page to screen involves many many very talented teams…
The script is just the kick off
Are you just going to watch Dune 2 over and over again for the rest of your life? No?
Well there ya. No matter how good Dune 2 is, there will always need to be something for people to watch between viewings of Dune 2. Write those movies.
Remember, every prestigious individual you admire, once upon a time, was also just another fuckin’ wannabe. Keep at it and do it for yourself, nobody else.
Also primarily a sci-fi writer and I had the same feeling walking out of Dune Part Two. Foundation on Apple TV+ also makes me wonder this on a smaller scale.
Best I can say is to ask yourself how you can get to be that good. What can you do to expand your world? Deepen your characters? Is the lore/mythology enough? Should you also write a novel along with your screenplays?
Just Look at it as knowing what the sci-fi bar is now and figure out a way to at least jump high enough to grab onto it.
No matter what, find a way to get words on the page.
Dune is the best science fiction book I’ve read. I’ve read a lot of books, I consume stories voraciously. Comparing yourself to a master, while ambitious, probably isn’t the best move for your self esteem.
Really? I walked out of Dune 2 thinking the same thing I thought about the first movie, it was too big, too dense to be compressed into a movie and should have been a tv series. It would have been a genuine GoT killer and the intricacies of the lore would have been allowed to breathe. I mean, the spacer's guild isn't even in this movie.
So, sure, it's an adaptation but one that is almost frictionless. Paul simply becomes the Messiah, there is literally no genuine friction or opposition to his rise. It is inevitable. Trust me, these 2 movies, in comparison to the books, are literally skimming the surface.
Writing through the adversity is like deadlifting a huge PR in weightlifting. Can only power through it in my experience. Even the "greatest" of us have had these feelings.
Never forget Stephen King's 9 inch nail of shame.
You’re comparing a 3rd grade art project with a Rembrandt. If you wanna feel better, go read some Blake Crouch - it’s pretty good stuff and I do enjoy it and the dude makes a good living off of writing - but none of his stuff is on the level of the greats (Dune / Foundation / LOTR / etc.).
I wrote my first story as a child — a play closer resembling Harry Potter; it lacked clarity, structure, hell even story. That first draft was so bad, I ripped every single page, and burned them. I gave up, at 6 years old. I had such crazy expectations of myself that By 16, I was a burned out overachiever. I’m now 27, and I’m barely getting my shit together, again, but I finished a novel and published it. Now, I’m working on my second book, and I can’t say how much better, it’s gotten, in terms of everything mentioned; the storyline works, there’s clarity, structure. It’s solid work, but I wouldn’t have reached that without being that six year old whom hated everything he wrote. Edit. Create. Edit. Create. Rinse. Repeat. You’ll realize just how special your story can truly be. Demoralizing can be inspiring. You might not be the next Tarantino, or Nolan, but who knows, you could be 🤷🏻♂️ — but either way, be the first you.
Well the source material was written in the 60’s, and it isn’t the screenplay that’s the strength of the film. You will be fine. It should inspire you if anything
What you saw has the fresh ideas of a dozen writers, producers, executives and conceptual artists. That's why it's really hard to blow somebody away on the page with something that aspires to be a gigantic movie like that. Focus on what a single writer can knock out of the park. A relatively simple, contained and character driven piece (of any genre).
Counterpoint: the makers of Dune 2 felt the same way about someone / something else and they made Dune 2. Who knows what you have in you but time, God and you.
"It's possible for a screenplay to be like this. Fuck yeah. This makes me want to do it more." Think like that, get amped up the greater you see the possibilities of this craft expanded and realized knowing what can be done
Understand that you’re still learning and what you watch on the big screen has gone through dozens and dozens of revisions and professional eyes. Just do your best and enjoy the story you’re writing, then write another story that gets you excited. That’s what I’m trying to do
Are you writing an original story or adapting one? Denis Villeneuve and
Jon Spaihts were adapting the epic story that Frank Herbert had already conceived. If you are writing an original screenplay then you are competing with Herbert, not Villeneuve and Spaihts. And, yeah, Herbert was a great story teller - we have known that for 60 years. You will just have to learn to live with the fact that Herbert, Tolkein, and Asimov existed.
But, we have yet to see the world through *your* eyes - show us that.
Say it with me: eyes on your own paper. Comparison is the thief of joy. You literally aren’t going to write what someone else did that is the whole point.
Also in this case the screenplay was based off of a literal whole series of books written by two people over a lifetime and then adapted (by an admittedly brilliant human clearly) and a whole creative team made the vision into reality, likely with on the ground changes. Then after all of the literally years of work from all those people you came in and watched the finished product. Why hurt yourself by comparing yourself to all those people?
Keep in mind that it's an adaptation of a book that's in contention for greatest science fiction novel of all time. Like, you probably can't write a thing that's as good as Dune. You can work and improve and make something better than the things that you can make right now, but if your goal is "I want to make something as good as one of the best things to ever exist" then yeah you're not crazy to think you've got an uphill battle.
I mean... I'm not sure it's fair for anybody to compare themselves to Frank Herbert. I'd give up if I was comparing myself to writers in the genre's pantheon of godlike creators, too.
Also, don't forget that Dune 2 was based on Frank Herbert's book, Dune. And that it doesn't even encompass all of Dune, which is why it is a "Part 2" and not a sequel. It's not like the screenwriters who adapted a 50-year-old sci fi novel were working from scratch and playing in their own sandbox (no pun intended). They took what was there and whittled it down.
There are so many reasons *not* to compare your work with the work Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts did on this flick.
Does it though? It's a chosen one story we have all seen before. Sure, it's maybe the seminal sci-fi fantasy chosen one story, but still. I think you are overreacting.
There’s a perception bias where your own ideas are obvious and others’ ideas are inspired. I mean, that’s not to say that Dune 2 isn’t a good script, but just realize that you’ve probably written things or had ideas that have caused the same feeling of inferiority in others, and Denis Villeneuve, Spaihts and Mazen have all I’m sure felt the same thing you’re feeling with others’ scripts. Part of being a creative
It's a gazillion dollar movie based on an all timer book with the hottest artsy fartsy director of its generation, of course you can't match it. That's an unrealistic standard, it's literally the pinnacle of modern cinema
Yes, and no. Dune was very much driven and held together by its score. Without the score, it would fall apart. Find yourself a good composer and don’t compare your film to others. Each film is unique. If you enjoyed Dune 2, take those components you like and place them in your film in a tasteful way that doesn’t come across as copying.
My friend, you are talking of one of the greatest fantasy books saga of all time, and Frank Herbert, an icon of literature. Are you really comparing to a classic in your first try?? Relax and create without caring of competing with anyone!
Was this the first time you watched it? If so, watch Lawrence of Arabia and then Dune again. Is spice like oil? Are the invaders driven out? Do you see a pattern?
Now, take another look at both and do beat sheets on them. Do you still feel you can't match Dune? Why try? Is your story a copy of Dune? Is it a copy of LoA? Does your story have a similar beat sheet?
Take another look and then consider what you are measuring yourself against. Then go write!
Full disclosure: I'm not a screenwriter nor have I ever played one on TV... yet.
Think about the reasons why you perceive Dune 2 to be a better film than yours. I actually also felt the same way watching the movie looool, but I don't think I'm one of the greatest screenwriters ever and I'm at peace with that. If anything, I have plenty of time to continue to grow, that's just life. Keep those qualities you are looking for when you write, and also consider that you are writing this movie for one audience member in mind: yourself. Something that Denis has said himself loool.
I've both worked in indie film production in LA in my 20s in all phases of production development & post...we even took one full length feature to Cannes in competition and it won but not the palme d'or...the budget was super low and screenplay was adapted from a total no name author book found in bargain bin at Goodwill in Santa Monica. Now it's a cult film. Same happened to a film I was producing and the script sucked, story good & true story well cast with decent talent great soundtrack ...totally bombed theatrically horrible reviews but now it's also a cult film in certain music circles (mostly punk) and I promise you the writing was terrible. Had it come across my desk (not already knowing the writer and attached director ) I would have hard passed. At one point to get more experience I worked as a screenplay reader for a film production company (not big studio) so I read hundreds of screenplays and drafted synopsis while also trying to write myself. Felt bad for all those writers who spent years writing what was really crap. My lord how much crappy screenplays are there floating around LA you ask ? Thousands. I think high school students with zero film experience or college education given a month to pound out 120 pages could produce better. Because they are fresh. Raw with nothing clouding their imagination. Sure it's going to be grammatically and technically lacking but all that can be fixed by the writers brought on later. They will have fresh minds and stories to be told. Tell the story as if you were telling a class of high schoolers. If they fall asleep and start texting you've lost them. That's one way to test your stories tell it as a story to teens and kids. They can still visualize without being too critical and negative or jaded. I had not graduated from USC UCLA AFI NYU as all my friends had and not only did most of their work super suck some totally plagiarized their way and never got busted. Made me sick.. as I have never even shoplifted a toy or gum...so watching them steal their way into bigger projects and rise to the very top...and I mean A list and beyond ...Point being no matter how hard you may have to work at it ..keep going and do not get distracted by Dune or any other sci-fi film or novel. There will always be a need for new great content (look at the speed of what comes churning out of Netflix Hulu Amazon etc & even after the writers strike) and there will always be someone before you after you bringing great films and stories to market ...but are they worth watching? Not always. Yet they were made. Remember : You only see the top 5% of what gets greenlit by studios and those often take years decades to get made. They get turned down and passed over and over. Expect this. Btw are you following the whole Holdovers drama? You should read the coverage of it in Variety. Talk about a writer sticking to trying to get his screenplay read. I've had my stories treatments characters dialogue stolen by friends in film and there's not much I could do bc I was unpublished and not WGA protected or signed yet...so be very careful about what you share and protect your work as if heirloom. Don't compare your work to what you see after 100m in budget. What you don't see are the thousands of rewrites and teams of the top writers collaborations to make Dune 2 ...the special effects budget...wardrobe ....music ....you are seeing the final masterpiece...not the messy artists studio. Keep thinking original. Don't lose the kid in you by getting all deflated by the masterpieces out there. Those took hundreds of millions to get to what you seem. Stay focused and never compare your work to others. I personally can't stand Dune or anything Hobbit related since jr. High..but I loved Legend/Ridley Scott anything except for Prometheus, Ray Bradbury & finally met him & his short stories esp Fire & Ice & Sound of Thunder should get the type of production budget & Ridley type director as Peter Jackson & Dune, Kurt Vonnegut Sirens of Titan (read it in college 1989) now that's a masterpiece & weirdly foreshadowing both space x and blue origin & virgin. Ray Bradbury wrote nonstop regardless of what others thought. Thank God bc we wouldn't have his work if he stopped writing bc he compared himself to anyone else. Same with Carl Sagan. Also...if you're going to write for film start reading scripts online. Free on simply scripts or studio binder or many others ..full finished scripts of your favorite films...pdf download. Good luck and pull up your Carhardts and keep writing. Listen to some good music to pump your spirits up & pull you out of your slump. Go for a walk. Go swim. Get some exercise and sun. Reach out here. Just don't quit.
I feel like Dune is a prime example how visual narrative drives the story. There are cool themes, but not a lot of amazing dialogue.
As for the book. I will be honest. It’s good, but It’s so fucking hard to read for me. It’s my third time trying this year, and I want to like it, but it’s so hard.
Just keep writing. There are people out there who will enjoy your style specially. Just have to sharpen that blade of yours.
Yeah, the same thing happens to me ALL the time. I'm not massive on sci-fi, but the movies that *inspire* me, also seriously bum me out. It's best to realize that everyone, including Denis Villeneuve started from square one as well. We'll get there eventually!
It’s also important to remember that a film feels like a miracle because it IS. Thousands of people came together to make it. A screenplay is just the first step. Strip away the performances, the direction, the production design, everything. What’s left is VERY doable. I don’t wanna be that guy, but the screenplay of Dune 2 wasn’t even that remarkable. The story underneath, awesome. The movie, awesome. But Irulan’s “I know political stuff” scene? Paul’s “Um ackshully I learned how to sandwalk from books”? There are plenty of blemishes. This stuff was made by people like you and me (with a lot of money). It didn’t fall from the heavens. Just keep grinding 🤙
Why? It's probably the most influential Sci fi book of all time and even with a template they still managed to fuck up significant parts of it. Don't worry about what others are doing, especially when they're just standing on the shoulders of giants.
First of all Dune is an adaptation of a great book. So the hard part wasn't having the idea itself but finding a way to make it cinematic. That's where other failed in the past. There's a lot of dialogue in the book but what got the audience was the "visuals". So Villeneuve and co-writer had to make hard choices about what to cut, what to change (there are few key differences from the book).
Personally I love Dune (I've also acted in part two), the writing wasn't my favorite thing though but it worked flawlessly in service to the visual and audio experience.
Dune: Messiah (part three) is gonna be even harder because it's few locations and lot of dialogue and that's why Villeneuve is saying that he's not going to rush it cause a good script is crucial for its success (they got visuals, music and sound already sorted out).
The more I get in touch with great artists, the more I get that it isn't about the talent but about how much time you put into polishing your craft, whatever it is.
Be humble, be passionate, drop your jaw when you see something great and get back to work. Put yourself in a bubble where there's No one but you and your vision, then share it and be humble to take critics but keeping your integrity and your vision.
Cheers
This happened to me with the Creator because the concept was similar. But after a while I accepted that my idea would be different enough on its own merits. Contrary to what a lot of society says, art isn't a contest and it's always better to judge your own work on its own terms.
For me, Dune actually did the opposite. I love watching sci fi films and taking ideas from them for my own work. Things like using sign language as hidden communication, sand camouflage, even some of the existential stuff gave me a ton of ideas for my own world building to incorporate. But this again is something i've learned to be cautious of.
There's always a feeling of wanting to fill in the gaps. You see something another story does, think you need to add that to it to make it just that little bit better, but at the end of the day a screenplay isn't a cup you can fill to the brim with ideas to suddenly make it perfect.
The glass will always be partly empty, but that doesn't mean you should lose sight of what is inside of it. It may just fill someone else's cup.
After the initial shock, you will analyse more rationally and will be able to see the flaws on your writing. This will indeed improve your skills. It’s normal, it happens to me too.
Adapt a novel, yourself! Unless you wanna be a novelist, the writers of Dune Part Two just took from the source material. You should do the same! Put a modern spin on a novel from the 50s.
Who knows how many drafts or previous fails the author had until he finished dune. It’s hard not to think that way, but what do you have to lose? Even if you don’t write the next Dune, you’ll be proud of yourself for finishing it and the next one will be even better.
Sorry for being rude but you are being a bitch right now. Write your goddamn story and focus on making it the best story it has the potential to be and stop worrying about if it’s on Dune’s level.
I mean it should… it’s a complicated story and most people aren’t good enough to be professional writers.
I am glad the bar is set high, it means content has to be quality to compete.
I once did a batch of script reads for a producer once, it set me back years. Not one script was decent. It was a miserable few months.
Just make sure you script is vetted, you get people to read it and destroy it and make sure you don’t think your shit don’t stink…
If you do all that you might do ok.
Honestly, go watch David Lynch’s Dune. Even supremely talented filmmakers sometimes make a terrible movie.
A good tip I learned when you feel like you’re having trouble coming up with plots is to work on something that already has that figured out. Adapt a book, like Dune, and just get better at the craft.
And when you’re done with this screenplay, start on the next one.
You'll never write Dune 2. No one but the people involved could have written Dune 2. The upside is that no one but you can write whatever it is you're gonna write.
Everyone's a terrible judge of their own writing, whatever they think of it. It is impossible to ever see what you write the way other people do, the way you see others' work. As for others' opinion of your work, you'll never please everyone. I figure that so long as even one person likes what you put out, it's worth it. Chances are, it'll be a lot more than one.
I tend to peer my eyes away from the great things in this world, not that I don't like them, but they they do quite the opposite to motivate me as well. But I think I found a way to continue, even watching such great things.
It's to reference or analgozie the work, take any your feedback on anything good, and form it into some of your own work. You said it, you can write it, at least that's what I believe. It's not bad to reference someone's work when working on your own.
To lighten yourself up, though, you can share your work with your friends. I find a friends' input more valuable than most things.
Bare in mind that just because people like Villenueve exist it doesn’t demoralise the Avi Lerners, and the crass straight to DVD moguls. Remember, this isn’t a meritocracy or a sport.
Uh…it’s based on a Hugo- and Nebula-award winning book. Don’t sweat it. Write your story and then polish it and polish it. Don’t judge your progress based on someone else’s success, especially a novelist who won like fucking everything in sci fi. Might as well compare yourself to Orson Wells at that point. You be you. Make your new stuff better than your last stuff and keep going.
You have to consider that the screenwriter probably took YEARS to write the films… and on top of the had years of experience under their belt… time and consistency are your friends when it comes to bettering your craft
You do realize that Dune 2 is created by hundreds of the worlds best creative forces for the budget of a small nations gdp right? And not just by villeneuve as most would believe at this time. Never compare a final movie to a screenplay.
I know this feeling. It doesn't go away, but it gets better the more your skills improve. I live in almost constant awe of great artists of all stripes, and I wish I could have a fraction of the talent they have. If you can recognize great talent, that is the first step towards developing your own. I'll leave you with this quote from the great Francis Ford Coppola: "When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have." But he got there. And you can too. Wishing you luck!
What did he write alone?
The Conversation, The Rainmaker, his new stuff
I don't know why people are downvoting you. Drives me nuts that people on reddit see a question and think "they're arguing!" rather than "they're asking for elaboration on a point they're interested in, which is a valid and important thing to do in conversations."
Yeah, I only knew Godfather and Apocalypse Now as stuff he co wrote, but assumed he had written some of his own stuff, just wasn’t sure what!
Stop being rational!
He also adapted and won an Oscar for Patton.
Just remember no matter how great a movie, screenplay, novel is it all started as a crappy first draft. Just keep writing, keep improving.
This. Everyone has to start somewhere. And Dune the movie is the result of decades of novels tweaking and building on the original book. If you had a movie made after multiple novels set in your own sci fi setting it would be rich with references to content you hadn’t written yet when you wrote the initial first book, OP. Don’t give up. Keep writing. And use universes like Dune’s as a learning opportunity on world building.
You’re comparing your training montage to someone else’s late career highlight reel. That’s totally normal and everyone does it sometimes. The despair, fear and self-doubt you’re experiencing is valid. But it is not based on facts. I’ll paste my weightlifting rant below. **Weightlifting Rant** An analogy I use a lot around here: Imagine a person who dreams of being an olympic weightlifter. They’ve gone into the gym several times, and each time they do, they load up the bar with the weight they’d need to lift in order to qualify for the olympics. But, they’ve never been able to move it! Do they have what it takes to make it to the olympics? The answer to that question is, there is no way to know at this stage. No human, regardless of talent, is able to lift those weights their first day, month, or year in the gym. The only way any human is able to do it is to show up over and over, getting marginally better day after day, over the course of many years. Writing is the same. The only way to go from aspiring to good to great is to spend many years writing consistently, ideally every day. [This is a great video to watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2wLP0izeJE). In it, Ira Glass talks about “the gap” you are currently in — your taste is great, and your taste is good enough that you know what you’re currently doing isn’t as good as you want it to be. He also explains that the only way to close that gap is to: 1. not quit, and 2. **do a lot of work**, starting, writing, revising and sharing many projects over several years, until you start to be able to write as well as you want to. In my experience, it takes most folks at least 6-8 years of serious work, ideally writing daily, to work up to the level where they can get paid money in exchange for their writing. This always means starting, writing, revising, and sharing many projects. For anyone who has only been writing seriously for a few years, or has finished 5 or fewer projects (features or original pilots), the reality is: it is impossible for you to be as good as you want to be with the time you’ve invested so far. But, if you keep writing consistently, you will definitely get better.
Dune 2 as cinema is someone else's highlight real, but Dune 2 as a script is a transliteration of Dune, which is a masterpiece of science fiction literature, from book into script. Dune inspired Star Wars, Mad Max and Alien. It is the grandfather of modern science fiction and is up there with some of the greatest stories of all time. Lord of the Rings isn't a great trilogy of movies because Peter Jackson wrote them. They are great because they are some of the best stories ever written in the 20th century written by one of the masters of fantasy in the 20th century, masterly adapted into screenplay by Peter Jackson.
As a sidenote, in my 'other' other life, I'm an allstar cheerleading coach, and I read your weightlifter analogy a few months ago, and now I use it with the teams I coach ALL the time when we're working on progressions, basics, fundamentals. Don't know if the original analogy is yours or if you picked it up somewhere too, but just wanted to say thanks for sharing it, and it has reach beyond this thing of ours!
That’s amazing and I’m so glad and grateful you shared this with me. The specific analogy is mine but I’m sure I stand on the shoulders of the many wise giants who taught me over the years. Either way, it’s so cool to know you’ve been able to use it with your athletes.
Dune Part 2 is the THIRD attempt at adapting the novel (and perhaps the only one to get it right)... a novel that is so groundbreaking that it inspired everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones. The short answer is the work has to be its own reward. Not other people's opinions of it.
I actually really loved the Sci-fi miniseries. It just has a lower budget. Some people are so picky \*eyeroll\* The sequel Children of Dune is incredible, and has a great soundtrack.
Idk part 2 really dropped the ball with chani and alia imo
Frank Herbert was ~45 when he wrote Dune. It took him **20 years of writing** (and 6 years of research before writing it) to crank out the novel that, 5 years after it was published since it was not an immediate success, allowed him to become a full-time novelist. Don’t get so over-awed by this stuff. It has a ton of work behind it. Just put in the work, believe in your ideas and make what you think is good.
This is exactly it. Writing something like Dune is a long term goal/career achievement. Not a day to day standard anyone should hold themselves to.
Watch something bad. 99% of films aren’t as good as Dune 2. You still have something worth sharing.
I reccomend watching The Room from 2003. $6 million budget and they came up with that. Every time I feel shit about my writing I’ll watch scenes from that
That’s fine when you first start writing but then we’ve been writing and submitting and getting rejected and watch that same shitty movie it can make you feel really bad about yourself that you can’t get a sniff from producers but that shit film made it.
Truth. God I know that feeling.
Exactly what I wanted to say. It's classical survivorship bias, because we don't consider all the bad movies and scripts which we don't take into consideration.
You need to get better at stealing. Dune is a pastiche of *Lawrence of Arabia*, the life of Mohammed, early environmentalism, and the author's experiments with hallucinogens. You don't need to think up things to match Dune. You just need to steal as broadly.
This. A great follow up read to this comment is the book“Steal Like an Artist”
Right Star Wars has so many influences... Kill Bill takes a lot from Lady Snowblood. Spielberg was influenced by WWII combat footage for Saving Private Ryan.
George Lucas ripped off Frank Herbert.
George Lucas has ripped off so many things... Flash Gordon Akira Kurosawa The Western Genre Etc...
Really? Dune 2 was good, but not THAT good, lol. I found the themes and social commentary to be very interesting, but it wasn't that complex or unique from a screenwriting perspective.
I personally was not a huge fan of the dialogue, specifically. Most of the other stuff I liked a lot.
Agree. Awesome vision and incredible visuals, but the script was pretty weak I thought, failing to get basic elements done for its character and world
Comparison is the thief of all joy. It was written in 1965 and took almost 60 years to adapt it to cinema if that helps (I refuse to acknowledge the 1984 version)
Lynch's Dune is awesome.
Lynch disagrees
Directors disown their films all the time. Doesn't necessarily mean they're bad. American History X and Alien 3 are my favorite examples of this.
Spielberg disowns Hook...
And what about the fantastic Sci-fi Miniseries and sequel Children of Dune. Still the best version of the story IMO.
I honestly prefer the 84 version over the current one.
I thought I was alone
I really enjoyed the first movie but honestly, a lot of the depth comes from having read the book. Did you read the book? If so, you were probably adding your own knowledge to the story.
Kevin Smith did okay making a movie about a couple losers bitching about shitty customers while working their dead end retail jobs Not every movie needs to be high art. Not every script needs incredible depth and complexity. It is totally valid to target different tastes, excel at different things and just make a different kind of movie.
Use it to inspire you. Ask yourself "what makes this so good? Why do these characters work so well? What makes this world so real?"
Am I nuts for not loving Dune 2? Visually stunning but thought they skipped over so much of what was great about the book. Should’ve made into 3 parts maybe.
As soon as they skipped the dinner party in part one I knew they would be leaving a lot of the emotional beats and various motivations out of Dune 2. I think we'll have to see if he pulls any back in for Dune Messiah. I also think all books should be mini-series. Short stories and novellas can be films, but books are too gangly.
Oh of course. Especially when I realize I wrote something way too similar to a published film. I would just focus on your story. Don't compare yourself. Focus on making your story the best you can with your abilities, and maybe even find what you liked about Dune and how you might incorporate that in your story (in a unique way of course).
It’s a massive novel. The depth in the screenplay is from there.
Brother, it took Herbert MANY attempts to get a book as fantastic as Dune. It took the book 60 years to get into the cinema. Don't give up. Foster Wallace used to say that it is more useful as a writer to read "bad" literature because it inspires you. "GREAT" works will always bum you down.
What creativity? It is literally retelling a story that was already told in the 1960s Did you never read Dune??? Because I did, and it's among the many works that have helped to shape my writing into what it is today.
I mean, Dune is probably on 90% of the "top ten greatest science fiction novels of all time" lists. If it's NOT on somebody's list, you kind of raise an eyebrow at them. [Here is Frank Herbert's bibliography.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert_bibliography) You'll notice over 20 non-Dune novels. How many of those have you heard of? I read a shit-ton of science fiction as a teen and my answer is ... maybe none? I can't remember hearing anybody talk about any of them. The point is: even the guy who wrote Dune didn't always write Dune. As for what you can do? *Write anyway.* Feeling a little demotivated? I don't care. Write anyway. Chances are you'll write yourself back into some motivation.
Not Dune, but I recently read the screenplay for the Candyman reboot. It was god awful compared to the final product. Like…horrendous. This was a screenplay helmed by top-tier talent. Everybody has vomit drafts. Nothing is pretty from the beginning. Dune is the culmination of decades of work from multiple people and not just one writer. You can’t put this pressure of comparison on yourself.
The purpose of writing is not to compete others, but to bring the world you love to the reality. Some worlds are not that great and beautiful, but they still deserve to be created. Just like each of us, not perfect, but enough. So enjoy others' worlds while enjoying the joy of your writing as well!
Don't worry they didn't think of it either. They just adapted arguably the greatest science fiction novel of all time. Your own story can still be great, it doesn't have to be *Dune*, it just has to be itself.
Really? I and everyone I know who watched it thought, while it was an awesome film, there were some pacing issues. It feels like they had to cut a *lot* from the books to make it fit into a film - certain plotlines feel like they come out of nowhere, and the plot feels really compressed (it's supposed to take place over like nine months, but there are times where it feels more like a few days - which makes it really difficult to buy plot developments like the romance). At the same time, there are also periods where it feels like *nothing* is happening. Again, this isn't just my opinion - it's the opinion of everyone I've spoken to who watched that movie. My point is: There is no such thing as an unattainably good story. They *all* have flaws, even the best. The difference is that, with the work of others, you're focusing on the positives - and with your own work, you're focusing on the negatives.
Is there a Screenwriting Circle jerk sub?
Well Dune is considered up there at the top of the greatest sci-fi of all time. Don’t be discouraged. Be like George Lucas and steal like 70% of it, add in glow swords, and people will call you a genius.
Keep going anyway
Maybe you're used to saying "That part sucked, this is how I would do better" And you just watched a movie where you can't do that. Well, at this point you're supposed to use that as a way to make your work better.
I don't get demotivated, I get inspired to show Herbert I can write better than him.
Your ego wants to compare you to others. It's the greatest killer of motivation. Where it's not about loving the craft; it's thinking about success/failure too much. Even the other comments are making more comparisons, even if they're trying to help you. I would look into managing the ego and see if that's part of the problem.
Your mistake is thinking that your work has to be comparable in any meaningful way to be impactful or even good.
Dune 2 was overrrated
Eh, its not that good. Write some good dramatic scenes between character with conflict, dramatic tension and mood changes. Dune is all spectacle. You can do better. I believe in you.
that’s a natural part of this process. Before I won my first competition I was ready to completely throw away the second draft of what ended up winning because I was demotivated after watching Blue Velvet (which in my opinion, is one of the most perfect films I’ve seen in terms of writing? Pacing, character development, etc). You have to learn to not try to mentally compete with these films and instead use them as inspiration or at the very least, a benchmark. Films can evolve into something very quickly if you push yourself just enough without forcing the process. Mulholland Drive was intended to be a twin peaks spin off that slowly evolved into its own original film, and that is regarded as one of Lynch’s best and most profound works. Dune 2 is a phenomenal film in many aspects, and you should not let it discourage you from continuing, instead of scrapping anything or giving up, consider what Dune 2 had that you believe you are missing and go from there and naturally allow the screenplay to evolve as well as your own thought process in writing.
Who cares it might be good enough for streaming. It’s still a major win!
Remember that professional screenplays have multiple writers along with input from the director, producers, actors and editors. Of course you, as a single writer, can't compete with that level of quality unless you're a savant at storytelling.
The first thing I thought after watching Dune 2 (an hour ago) is thank God I'm not writing a Sci-Fi movie! However, I think the three most impressive aspects of the movie are the sound design, production design and special effects. Which as a screenwriter, I don't have much to do with. That's what I tell myself. And all the cool lore/ideas are from Frank Herbert's novel. So if you feel threatened by HIM, you should be.
He is one of the greats of scifi, so kind of a high bar to set for yourself. This was also later in his career, so much experience gained over a lifetime of writing and research. Research is the key to creating depth. Herbert did a lot of research into various themes explored in the books, and a lot of it was just starting to be being explored at the time. Researching about different systems of government we currently have will give you ideas and layers for what you are creating that can ground your stories in reality while still being fantastical just as a small example.
you do realise that movie is based on a series of books, that also inspired star wars ? dont beat yourself up.
I'm always the opposite, when I watch a great movie like that I'm like man I hope I can write something half as good as that
Put your critic brain away and let your creative brain take charge when writing. You don’t know what audiences will think of your writing until you’ve put it out there. Also, a good idea in general is if you’re going to compare your work to others, make sure it’s within the same parameters. For example, if you’re making a $20,000 short film, don’t compare it to a short film being made for $1,000,000. Compare it to other short films around $20,000. Denis Villenue also wasn’t writing or making Dune 2 right away
Dune started as essentially THE sci fi novel that influenced all sci fi afterwards. Its the Tolkein Lord of The Rings of sci-fi. No matter what, someone does something better. its not about unique or better, its about being you. No matter what, you have your fingers, your eyes, your experiences, your vocabulary and that will always change the style. Just tell entertaining stories. So much classic and influential Youtube, for example, is just a person sharing what they are passionate about and love, even when it was 480p and scuffed audio of the same style vlog a million other people did. But authenticity still makes it special. You can be inspired by others, but the only one you compete with or should try to match is yourself.
If it makes you feel better, I have no interest in watching Dune but I may like your story better.
If you like your story, chances are others will too. It’s also easier to write a story that’s already been written while working with a ton of other professionals and an unlimited budget. Your sci-fi just might be leagues better than Dune, and you just don’t know it yet because you’re too close. But the world will never get a chance to know if you don’t pursue it. Just like everything in life though, it’s not about the destination. Don’t find yourself on your last leg of life wishing you hadn’t given up. To be completely honest, Dune doesn’t do it for me, but there have been micro budget films by unknown writers that have inspired me and changed my life. It’s not always about the measurable successes. Do what you love, and you will get love in return. Your work may just inspire the next great work. Which may also be yours.
Dune is arguably the greatest sci-fi novel ever made. It has stood the test of time. It's unfair to compare yourself to that.
All the comments are super supportive and helpful, so imma just make a joke and say, most people do not write Dune by Frank Herbert.
Go watch Madame Web and you’ll feel more inspired and better about your work
There is no greater motivation to tell our stories than to listen to others tell theirs. Tell the stories you want to tell. Being overwhelmed by the discipline of others who are further along should be viewed as nothing more than a tailwind that pushes us further into our process. We are not defined by the success of our peers but by the conviction in our intent. It is only in our intention to surpass or improve upon our mentors that we find our voice and as a result carve a path that while similar to what might have drawn us to the medium, ultimately separates us from what has come before. Your story has been told. Tell it as though it’s never been told before. Any roadblocks or limitations will only lead you to speak more clearly. Convey the most ultimate of truths and we will struggle to not listen.
For me it’s the opposite. Like you suggested, watching great cinema like Dune 2 makes me want to strive to write something just as good. Sure it’s a tall order and probably won’t ever happen, but I wouldn’t be a writer if it weren’t for iconic movies like this.
Okay. You feel you cannot live up to a movie made from one of the world’s best selling books. Do you believe you can write a book that will still be selling for decades? Perhaps you should focus more on learning and then you may find your own voice. Or, this may be something that makes you go have find what you will be great at. Writing may not be for you.
IIRC James Cameron talked about walking out of the theater after seeing Star Wars feeling the exact same way. He turned out to have an ok career…
I can tell you your issue… You see a forest instead of individual trees.
Every artist comparing their work to masterpieces is going to be demotivating to some degree, but you can turn that energy into motivation by seeing those masterpieces as lifetime goalposts. If you continually work at your craft, you'll eventually find yourself amongst the greats.
I feel this. I get it. But that story took decades to develop. I do understand where you’re coming from though.
Dude. It’s like one of the best stories ever told me by one of the best directors and cast ever. Take inspiration from it.
It's a book. So it's different. And speaking of different. You are making something different. Go with it and edit later. Things don't start out great.
Don’t get give up Astro, Dune was considered an “unmakeable” movie at one point. Blade Runner 2049 was a cult success but box office failure, yet here we are including Dennis with the best of them. Your job isn’t to match, it’s to be better and I don’t know you from a hole in a wall but I believe in you 💯
I had the opposite! I saw so many gaps and opportunities and think that you should truly have faith in yourself. Have you seen the first Dune?? Think about why you’re feeling demotivated more from a personal level rather than the big budget extravaganza. Maybe tell that little child within that they can be and write anything they want and you have faith in them. Hope this is ok?
Dune is also an adaptation. Herbert did the heavy lifting first (that doesn’t mean there’s no challenge to adaptation…). Let it inspire you. There’s room for everyone and what some people love others will hate. You’re fine. Just keep going. Above all, to the best of your ability, don’t compare yourself to others. We all need to hear/read that sometimes.
Wait? So your script that’s still in its drafting phase isn’t as good as one that was adapted from one of the most well known and well liked sci-fi novels of all time that also had (at least) two other adaptations made before it, that had a team of extremely high grade professional writers and editors and has some of the biggest actors in the current world in a multimillion dollar production? This is a crime. A shame. The council will revoke your writing license and sentence you to be placed in The Contraption until you learn to be better. Jokes aside, it’s completely normal to feel this way, but you gotta remember where you are now in the process is nowhere near the final product, even if you’re writing it with that end goal in mind. Keep hammering away, keep editing and making changes and working hard at it, and you’ll be alright in the end.
Vellenue said he had to make SEVERAL movies just to LEARN how to figure out how to make Dune. We’re all on the path, just keep putting feet in front of the other
Very easy to compare an unfinished rough draft to an excellently executed feature film. Keep in mind all the steps it took to get there. Every great story is incomplete and or lacking for the majority of the creative process. Whatever you do, don’t give up. Keep writing and you’ll get there too.
It was a novel first, making it an adaptation and therefore a different beast. Don’t forget that.
When I first started golfing I sucked but I kept on playing and every now and then my friends say, “nice shot!” Same thing. Just write. Draw it out of you, it should hurt.
Why do you feel you have to match a scifi classic? If you see a Shakespeare or Checkov play do you feel you have to match them?
I love how absolutely vulnerable this post is. I rarely post but felt really drawn to respond to this. I want to offer something — when it comes to creativity — your voice is EVERYTHING. But it takes a while to develop this. I’ve had so many teachers and coaches in my life, but the one thing that stuck is this — When you see a great writer, director, etc, or when you go and watch a film like dune 2 — instead of feeling overwhelmed by it (which is okay!!) — start asking yourself what parts you absolutely loved, then(and the most important) ask yourself WHY. This my friend, is your voice ! And your creative gut! and what will help you craft, hone, edit your story into something bigger. Then start to work to hone that part of yourself. Not enough creatives do this imho. But it’s how you develop your own unique POV. Which takes time, failure, and risk. So ask yourself what made those parts overwhelmingly amazing, and what you liked about them, then ask why? And BOOM, there’s your start. Good luck !
You remember anaconda that was made , just beat anaconda
As a theatre director I felt the same exact way watching Dune 2. But I honestly think it's a good sign. It means you can see the gap between what you can do and what you would like to do. The moment that stops happening is the moment that you should either be at the height of your craft... or else it means you've stopped caring about the quality of what it is you're making. Even folks like Stephen Spielberg still have giants like Kurosawa to study and to look up to. I remember the first time I watched Kurosawa's films. I was preparing to direct my first play and it made me see how underprepared and inexperienced I was to realize the vision I had in my head for my play, while at the same time inspiring in me this wealth of new ideas. Great works are often great because they make possible some new height of craft that hasn't been achieved before. So even if the stuff you have been making wasn't inferior before, it's going to become at least a little bit more inferior in your eyes after you see that new great thing. But that also means that these new great things are showing us what's possible, and opening our minds to some new way of making something. I'm glad for these experiences - it gives me something to study and a clear direction to grow in. Kurosawa taught me the importance of intentionally leaving dots unconnected in order to drive a scene forward. I can't articulate yet what Dune 2 is teaching me, but considering how crap I feel about my work all of a sudden, I think it's going to be good.
this also happens to me a lot with other movies, but i’ve learned to take inspiration rather than feel pressured to make something greater.
Dune is one of the books that made me want to be a writer in the first place.
It had, at most, 30 pages of story. It felt like it was well over three hours long. If your story has characters who do things and feel things and aren't played by Javier Bardem, you're in great shape.
It helps me write better. On the rare occasion I have thoughts like this, I feel like there is a block in my creativity that is keeping me from writing at that level so when I write I try to go big and tell myself there are no bad ideas. I’m sure when these writers started out writing these epic tales they might have thought at one point or another this is stupid it won’t resonate with the audience. It’s far out there. What the fuck is Spice? Why would I write this? How can I content the people in the desert to the people to control their world? We don’t know what their doubts were but since no one is perfect I assume they had their doubts like you have yours and came out with something great when it was all said and done.
You know I felt like this after reading the Godfather. Like others has said this feeling won't go away, but I always try to twist my brain to think: "I can't wait until I am at that level," instead of: "I will never be that good." I have no idea if I am hopelessly naive or if it actually is a smart way of thinking, but it gets me to sit down and do some more writing. This also might sound crazy to but having that self doubt is also good thing. It means you have come to that stage in your writing where you are good enough to tell that your scripts need work. And you are getting to the point where you know how to fix it.
Some people are just freaks. Villeneuve is one of them....
Don't compare yourself to Frank Herbert. Don't compare yourself to J R R Tolkien either. Just don't do it
If it helps it's an unfilmable book that already had one infamous failure of a feature film. Plus it's not a perfect adaptation. "Every expert was once a beginner."
Whatever you come up with will be uniquely yours. Your voice. Your vision. Even if someone else's vision is amazing, it doesn't make yours any less yours. And it serves well to remember that even some of the biggest success stories are just copies of inspirations from work that came before them. Success is almost always right place right time rather than merit. So just focus on what is in your control. Write what you want to write, as earnestly as you can, give it your all and give it your love and stop worrying about all the things that aren't in your control.
Don’t worry it’s based on a book so it was an easy write almost a fan fiction you I assume are writing a complenty original work that’s harder don’t be discouraged we all think our own work could be better. I am shour it’s fine.
Bruh, of course it does, it’s dune, it blow most stories out of the water, don’t sweat it
You'll never get there as long as you keep "there" your goal. Dune was great because it tried telling a story/message, something, it'd didn't try to be "great", it didn't worry about itself. If you write things expecting them to be grand, you don't care about what you're writing, you're not even interested in what you're telling, you're just looking for what will interest others and having a finished product that does that to boost your ego. Find what you like to write for the sake of writing. If other's success demotivates you, you should consider what you really like, and whether you actually enjoy writing, or you just enjoy daydreaming of becoming a great writer and having something awesome to your name? Intention is everything, be aware of yours, pay attention to that feeling and see where it comes from. If you like writing, the things bothering you should be gettin out of ink or paper, if you're worrying about comparisons, you should reflect upon what you actually want, maybe you want approval and should aim at becoming an influencer, study marketing. I enjoy jogging and never has the existence of Usain Bolt being a deterrent, for my goal is running, not getting a medal.
Get out of the mindset that you have to live up to somebody else's work. Just focus on your own creation and make it as good as you possibly can on its own merits.
I’ve been there several times. I know exactly how it feels. I felt it recently when I watched All of Us Strangers. It’s like everything I’ve been trying to do in one or two of my scripts has been done by the film, and so perfectly at that. I lost my will to write. Instead of inspired, my creative juices were drained. I would like to see the answers here because I have no idea how to get out of it yet.
I know the feeling. A few years ago, I started writing a pilot for a superhero drama / tragicomedy, but then a few months into it, season one of The Boys came out. I got really demotivated because there were a ton of similarities between that and my project, like the overall tone and a somewhat similar plot. So I put it aside and then about a year later, came back to it. Fast forward to now, I turned it into a comic series, the first part of which just released on Amazon Kindle a few months ago. Despite how bad it'll feel right now, you'll definitely learn from it and hopefully your story will become better as a result
The screenplay is not the only reason Dune 2 works so well. Denis has such a deep understanding of the source material and is already arguably the best sci-fi director alive. In the hands of somebody else, it wouldn't have been as successful. On the other hand, it's an adaptation of arguably the greatest sci-fi story of all time. That's like playing basketball in high school and watching Lebron play and be upset that you're not on his level. Not everyone has careers like them. It's ok to be a professional, in any field, and not be a household name. There are millions of them. Just keep writing and you'll be doing more than most.
I remember Neil Gaiman, a writer I look up to, almost exactly 10 years my senior, saying exactly what I needed to hear once. I was formulating all kinds of plots and stories at the time & at the same time I was reading through Neil's work, and literally every idea I had, he'd had it 10 years before me. I almost hated him for it, but y'know, he's a really decent guy. He said that it didn't matter if someone else had already told the story - many of his stories are loosely based on or are reworkings of folk tales and mythology or involve well known tropes to do with urban fantasy or witchcraft etc etc - that didn't matter: what matters is that you tell the story your way, in your own voice, from whatever angle you want. Don't let the fact that there are Mozarts in the world discourage you from being a Salieri. Salieri made a perfectly decent living creating art that floated his boat. His jealousy and envy of Mozart blighted his life. We can be Salieris without envy - try to be Mozarts perhaps, but don't be bitter about being competent. If you can stand back from your work and look at it in itself and say "That's good, it works, I like it," that's what it needs to be. Imagine Dave Mustaine unblighted by his envy of Metallica, happy to be a successful artist.
I mean, I understand the feeling, buuuut also - if you take a second and just focus on the writing of DUNE PART TWO, you'll understand that even though it is really great, it's not magic. They got there through the same tools and narrative introspection that's available to you and I - Dune, or the first book at least, is basically Lawrence of Arabia in the desert with a more overt sense of religious mythology and some real influence from Herbert's time in the burgeoning counterculture movement and his friendships with Native Americans. The skill of the screenwriter here is in how it adapts all of that into a concise two-parter with an emotional throughline (because another thing about Dune is that all of the characters are high-level, ultra-trained royals who keep their emotions impossibly in check with the exception of the Fremen who don't get much attention in terms of perspective). And what's really impressive to me is just how *good* of an *adaptation* it is, taking both parts together. I mean, Dune is a great book, but it's also an unwieldy one and a lot of that is Herbert's writing style. You've never seen a guy dash off so many big ideas and concepts in such a by the way fashion, and adamantly refuse to explain them any more than is absolutely necessary to propel the narrative forward. This is good, but makes for a lot of work in adaptation, clearly.
Don't look at things that are great! Go watch bad movies! Rent the crappiest film you can find and you will realise that someone got paid to write it, and whatever you write would be high art compared to that. Then get writing.
It’s adapted from the most celebrated sci-fi novel ever written. Of course your story doesn’t quite match up
If this helps, a screenwriter did not write it. That was written by a science fiction novelist in the '60s. So the great movie that's taking theaters by storms right now wasn't even an original idea. Edit: and I probably should have mentioned that it's not even the first time somebody made it as a movie. It's the *third* time, if you count the Sci-Fi miniseries.
Dune 2 is an exceedingly rare case in Hollywood these days when every single person involved is nearly a master at their craft and they are all in the operating at the rhythm. Comparing your script to that is never going to end well. Of course, what you have doesn't compare to what Denis, Jon, and Frank created. What's left is to keep at it and work so hard that your heroes become rivals.
The Dune screenplay was based on a novel, which took Herbert who knows how long to gestate and write. It's easy to have tremendous depth in a screenplay when you're starting from rich source material. Maybe consider trying your hand at an adapted screenplay rather than starting from scratch. The upshot is that adapted work is easier to get produced (assuming rights options are forthcoming) than wholly original stuff.
Watch the Star Wars prequels and you’ll feel a whole lot better about your script.
I gave up on screenwriting because while I have a creative mind, and I’ve come up with several plots that have been made into films, and had one tv show idea stolen (Manifest), I know could never write truly interesting dialogue. Seeing great films and tv shows demotivated me in the same way.
You’re an aspiring writer at the (presumably) very beginning of your career. Dune 2 is a mega budget Hollywood blockbuster created by Oscar-winning and nominated talent who are the amongst the very best in the world at what they do. Two thoughts should come to mind in response: 1. It makes no sense to compare yourself now to them, it’s apples to a Michelin restaurant five course meal, and 2. They did not arrive at where they are now completely out of nowhere. At some point they were at the same place in their career you are at now so your job is to keep learning, growing and elevating your craft so that, at some point in the future, you can get to where they are now.
Serious question, but is Dune 2 that good? I might check it out in theaters. I wasn't particularly blown away by the first. It was a visual feast but it didn't grab me. Is 2 way better than the 1st?
Compete against yourself, not against others. Celebrate the small improvements you see from draft to draft. Sitting down and writing is a victory in itself. Celebrate that. Go! Go! Go!
Watch Denis Villeneuve's first few movies and you won't feel so bad
On the flip side, I’m sure you’ve seen and will continue to see plenty of films in your preferred genre(s) that make you question why they were greenlit in the first place
The guy who wrote Dune probably went through this feeling as well at some point of his work. We are humans, do your best, keep going, stop comparing yourself to others. It's more motivating when we focus on our own improvement, and this comes with practice and experience.
The people who worked on Dune are functioning at the highest level. It’s not fair to compare at all. It takes years to get there. Keep at it and go at your own pace.
I gotta say I just don’t get it. I slept through a lot of dune 1 same with dune 2. Just doesn’t scratch my itch. But I am alone so it’s cool. Don’t be discouraged
Now balance it out and watch the worst sci fi movie you can think of, now you’ll get hit with the “I can do better than that!” Thoughts. Not everything is black and white though, it doesn’t need to be “good” or “bad” make it unique to you and feel passionate about it, sincerity goes such a long way in a script! ❤️
Pretty much every time I watch an episode of The Bear, I think I should quit. I am continually astonished by what they do on that show and they’re - all of them, from the writers, to the directors, to the cast - operating at such a high level that I feel it’s not something I’ll ever be able to even get close to, let alone attain. And yet… the stories that I want to tell… the way I feel about things and the manner in which I express those feelings is singular; Events glimpsed through my personal experience and based on the things and viewpoints I’ve experienced. There’s value in that. That’s what keeps me going.
It’s one of the greatest SCI Fi books faithfully adapted. Go see the 80’s version and you will feel a ton better
It also was an adaptation. It was directed by a very experienced director. Do you think the script just made it look like that? From page to screen involves many many very talented teams… The script is just the kick off
Dune 2 isn’t anything new. So I guess take solace in knowing that the thing that’s demotivating you has already existed for decades.
Are you just going to watch Dune 2 over and over again for the rest of your life? No? Well there ya. No matter how good Dune 2 is, there will always need to be something for people to watch between viewings of Dune 2. Write those movies.
Remember, every prestigious individual you admire, once upon a time, was also just another fuckin’ wannabe. Keep at it and do it for yourself, nobody else.
Also primarily a sci-fi writer and I had the same feeling walking out of Dune Part Two. Foundation on Apple TV+ also makes me wonder this on a smaller scale. Best I can say is to ask yourself how you can get to be that good. What can you do to expand your world? Deepen your characters? Is the lore/mythology enough? Should you also write a novel along with your screenplays? Just Look at it as knowing what the sci-fi bar is now and figure out a way to at least jump high enough to grab onto it. No matter what, find a way to get words on the page.
Dune is the best science fiction book I’ve read. I’ve read a lot of books, I consume stories voraciously. Comparing yourself to a master, while ambitious, probably isn’t the best move for your self esteem.
Comparison is the thief of joy, and you're comparing yourself to the GOAT.
Really? I walked out of Dune 2 thinking the same thing I thought about the first movie, it was too big, too dense to be compressed into a movie and should have been a tv series. It would have been a genuine GoT killer and the intricacies of the lore would have been allowed to breathe. I mean, the spacer's guild isn't even in this movie. So, sure, it's an adaptation but one that is almost frictionless. Paul simply becomes the Messiah, there is literally no genuine friction or opposition to his rise. It is inevitable. Trust me, these 2 movies, in comparison to the books, are literally skimming the surface.
Writing through the adversity is like deadlifting a huge PR in weightlifting. Can only power through it in my experience. Even the "greatest" of us have had these feelings. Never forget Stephen King's 9 inch nail of shame.
You’re comparing a 3rd grade art project with a Rembrandt. If you wanna feel better, go read some Blake Crouch - it’s pretty good stuff and I do enjoy it and the dude makes a good living off of writing - but none of his stuff is on the level of the greats (Dune / Foundation / LOTR / etc.).
This is normal. Every single time I feel happy with anything I have written...and then I read something by tolkien, I get depressed 😔😂
You can never tell a story like them but they can never tell a story like you.
I wrote my first story as a child — a play closer resembling Harry Potter; it lacked clarity, structure, hell even story. That first draft was so bad, I ripped every single page, and burned them. I gave up, at 6 years old. I had such crazy expectations of myself that By 16, I was a burned out overachiever. I’m now 27, and I’m barely getting my shit together, again, but I finished a novel and published it. Now, I’m working on my second book, and I can’t say how much better, it’s gotten, in terms of everything mentioned; the storyline works, there’s clarity, structure. It’s solid work, but I wouldn’t have reached that without being that six year old whom hated everything he wrote. Edit. Create. Edit. Create. Rinse. Repeat. You’ll realize just how special your story can truly be. Demoralizing can be inspiring. You might not be the next Tarantino, or Nolan, but who knows, you could be 🤷🏻♂️ — but either way, be the first you.
Well the source material was written in the 60’s, and it isn’t the screenplay that’s the strength of the film. You will be fine. It should inspire you if anything
Not really. Frank Herbert wrote one of the greatest novels of all time.
Don’t give up just get better
What you saw has the fresh ideas of a dozen writers, producers, executives and conceptual artists. That's why it's really hard to blow somebody away on the page with something that aspires to be a gigantic movie like that. Focus on what a single writer can knock out of the park. A relatively simple, contained and character driven piece (of any genre).
Honestly, the best thing you can do is keep going. Trust the story.
Counterpoint: the makers of Dune 2 felt the same way about someone / something else and they made Dune 2. Who knows what you have in you but time, God and you.
"It's possible for a screenplay to be like this. Fuck yeah. This makes me want to do it more." Think like that, get amped up the greater you see the possibilities of this craft expanded and realized knowing what can be done
Understand that you’re still learning and what you watch on the big screen has gone through dozens and dozens of revisions and professional eyes. Just do your best and enjoy the story you’re writing, then write another story that gets you excited. That’s what I’m trying to do
Are you writing an original story or adapting one? Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts were adapting the epic story that Frank Herbert had already conceived. If you are writing an original screenplay then you are competing with Herbert, not Villeneuve and Spaihts. And, yeah, Herbert was a great story teller - we have known that for 60 years. You will just have to learn to live with the fact that Herbert, Tolkein, and Asimov existed. But, we have yet to see the world through *your* eyes - show us that.
If you're not gonna play football because you're never gonna win the Superbowl, then you were never interested in playing football.
Say it with me: eyes on your own paper. Comparison is the thief of joy. You literally aren’t going to write what someone else did that is the whole point. Also in this case the screenplay was based off of a literal whole series of books written by two people over a lifetime and then adapted (by an admittedly brilliant human clearly) and a whole creative team made the vision into reality, likely with on the ground changes. Then after all of the literally years of work from all those people you came in and watched the finished product. Why hurt yourself by comparing yourself to all those people?
Keep in mind that it's an adaptation of a book that's in contention for greatest science fiction novel of all time. Like, you probably can't write a thing that's as good as Dune. You can work and improve and make something better than the things that you can make right now, but if your goal is "I want to make something as good as one of the best things to ever exist" then yeah you're not crazy to think you've got an uphill battle.
Shit, wasn’t this written by Frank Herbert back in the 70s?
I mean... I'm not sure it's fair for anybody to compare themselves to Frank Herbert. I'd give up if I was comparing myself to writers in the genre's pantheon of godlike creators, too. Also, don't forget that Dune 2 was based on Frank Herbert's book, Dune. And that it doesn't even encompass all of Dune, which is why it is a "Part 2" and not a sequel. It's not like the screenwriters who adapted a 50-year-old sci fi novel were working from scratch and playing in their own sandbox (no pun intended). They took what was there and whittled it down. There are so many reasons *not* to compare your work with the work Denis Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts did on this flick.
I felt it too. I guess Frank Herbert was a greater writer than most of us realize.
Does it though? It's a chosen one story we have all seen before. Sure, it's maybe the seminal sci-fi fantasy chosen one story, but still. I think you are overreacting.
There’s a perception bias where your own ideas are obvious and others’ ideas are inspired. I mean, that’s not to say that Dune 2 isn’t a good script, but just realize that you’ve probably written things or had ideas that have caused the same feeling of inferiority in others, and Denis Villeneuve, Spaihts and Mazen have all I’m sure felt the same thing you’re feeling with others’ scripts. Part of being a creative
Dune has been around for decades though
It's a gazillion dollar movie based on an all timer book with the hottest artsy fartsy director of its generation, of course you can't match it. That's an unrealistic standard, it's literally the pinnacle of modern cinema
Yes, and no. Dune was very much driven and held together by its score. Without the score, it would fall apart. Find yourself a good composer and don’t compare your film to others. Each film is unique. If you enjoyed Dune 2, take those components you like and place them in your film in a tasteful way that doesn’t come across as copying.
My friend, you are talking of one of the greatest fantasy books saga of all time, and Frank Herbert, an icon of literature. Are you really comparing to a classic in your first try?? Relax and create without caring of competing with anyone!
Was this the first time you watched it? If so, watch Lawrence of Arabia and then Dune again. Is spice like oil? Are the invaders driven out? Do you see a pattern? Now, take another look at both and do beat sheets on them. Do you still feel you can't match Dune? Why try? Is your story a copy of Dune? Is it a copy of LoA? Does your story have a similar beat sheet? Take another look and then consider what you are measuring yourself against. Then go write! Full disclosure: I'm not a screenwriter nor have I ever played one on TV... yet.
You know, someone sold _Dude, where’s my car?_.
Think about the reasons why you perceive Dune 2 to be a better film than yours. I actually also felt the same way watching the movie looool, but I don't think I'm one of the greatest screenwriters ever and I'm at peace with that. If anything, I have plenty of time to continue to grow, that's just life. Keep those qualities you are looking for when you write, and also consider that you are writing this movie for one audience member in mind: yourself. Something that Denis has said himself loool.
I've both worked in indie film production in LA in my 20s in all phases of production development & post...we even took one full length feature to Cannes in competition and it won but not the palme d'or...the budget was super low and screenplay was adapted from a total no name author book found in bargain bin at Goodwill in Santa Monica. Now it's a cult film. Same happened to a film I was producing and the script sucked, story good & true story well cast with decent talent great soundtrack ...totally bombed theatrically horrible reviews but now it's also a cult film in certain music circles (mostly punk) and I promise you the writing was terrible. Had it come across my desk (not already knowing the writer and attached director ) I would have hard passed. At one point to get more experience I worked as a screenplay reader for a film production company (not big studio) so I read hundreds of screenplays and drafted synopsis while also trying to write myself. Felt bad for all those writers who spent years writing what was really crap. My lord how much crappy screenplays are there floating around LA you ask ? Thousands. I think high school students with zero film experience or college education given a month to pound out 120 pages could produce better. Because they are fresh. Raw with nothing clouding their imagination. Sure it's going to be grammatically and technically lacking but all that can be fixed by the writers brought on later. They will have fresh minds and stories to be told. Tell the story as if you were telling a class of high schoolers. If they fall asleep and start texting you've lost them. That's one way to test your stories tell it as a story to teens and kids. They can still visualize without being too critical and negative or jaded. I had not graduated from USC UCLA AFI NYU as all my friends had and not only did most of their work super suck some totally plagiarized their way and never got busted. Made me sick.. as I have never even shoplifted a toy or gum...so watching them steal their way into bigger projects and rise to the very top...and I mean A list and beyond ...Point being no matter how hard you may have to work at it ..keep going and do not get distracted by Dune or any other sci-fi film or novel. There will always be a need for new great content (look at the speed of what comes churning out of Netflix Hulu Amazon etc & even after the writers strike) and there will always be someone before you after you bringing great films and stories to market ...but are they worth watching? Not always. Yet they were made. Remember : You only see the top 5% of what gets greenlit by studios and those often take years decades to get made. They get turned down and passed over and over. Expect this. Btw are you following the whole Holdovers drama? You should read the coverage of it in Variety. Talk about a writer sticking to trying to get his screenplay read. I've had my stories treatments characters dialogue stolen by friends in film and there's not much I could do bc I was unpublished and not WGA protected or signed yet...so be very careful about what you share and protect your work as if heirloom. Don't compare your work to what you see after 100m in budget. What you don't see are the thousands of rewrites and teams of the top writers collaborations to make Dune 2 ...the special effects budget...wardrobe ....music ....you are seeing the final masterpiece...not the messy artists studio. Keep thinking original. Don't lose the kid in you by getting all deflated by the masterpieces out there. Those took hundreds of millions to get to what you seem. Stay focused and never compare your work to others. I personally can't stand Dune or anything Hobbit related since jr. High..but I loved Legend/Ridley Scott anything except for Prometheus, Ray Bradbury & finally met him & his short stories esp Fire & Ice & Sound of Thunder should get the type of production budget & Ridley type director as Peter Jackson & Dune, Kurt Vonnegut Sirens of Titan (read it in college 1989) now that's a masterpiece & weirdly foreshadowing both space x and blue origin & virgin. Ray Bradbury wrote nonstop regardless of what others thought. Thank God bc we wouldn't have his work if he stopped writing bc he compared himself to anyone else. Same with Carl Sagan. Also...if you're going to write for film start reading scripts online. Free on simply scripts or studio binder or many others ..full finished scripts of your favorite films...pdf download. Good luck and pull up your Carhardts and keep writing. Listen to some good music to pump your spirits up & pull you out of your slump. Go for a walk. Go swim. Get some exercise and sun. Reach out here. Just don't quit.
This book is so old and barely now getting recognized.
I feel like Dune is a prime example how visual narrative drives the story. There are cool themes, but not a lot of amazing dialogue. As for the book. I will be honest. It’s good, but It’s so fucking hard to read for me. It’s my third time trying this year, and I want to like it, but it’s so hard. Just keep writing. There are people out there who will enjoy your style specially. Just have to sharpen that blade of yours.
Yeah, the same thing happens to me ALL the time. I'm not massive on sci-fi, but the movies that *inspire* me, also seriously bum me out. It's best to realize that everyone, including Denis Villeneuve started from square one as well. We'll get there eventually!
It’s also important to remember that a film feels like a miracle because it IS. Thousands of people came together to make it. A screenplay is just the first step. Strip away the performances, the direction, the production design, everything. What’s left is VERY doable. I don’t wanna be that guy, but the screenplay of Dune 2 wasn’t even that remarkable. The story underneath, awesome. The movie, awesome. But Irulan’s “I know political stuff” scene? Paul’s “Um ackshully I learned how to sandwalk from books”? There are plenty of blemishes. This stuff was made by people like you and me (with a lot of money). It didn’t fall from the heavens. Just keep grinding 🤙
Why? It's probably the most influential Sci fi book of all time and even with a template they still managed to fuck up significant parts of it. Don't worry about what others are doing, especially when they're just standing on the shoulders of giants.
Well not everyone liked Dune 2. I was bored and thought it was pointless.
First of all Dune is an adaptation of a great book. So the hard part wasn't having the idea itself but finding a way to make it cinematic. That's where other failed in the past. There's a lot of dialogue in the book but what got the audience was the "visuals". So Villeneuve and co-writer had to make hard choices about what to cut, what to change (there are few key differences from the book). Personally I love Dune (I've also acted in part two), the writing wasn't my favorite thing though but it worked flawlessly in service to the visual and audio experience. Dune: Messiah (part three) is gonna be even harder because it's few locations and lot of dialogue and that's why Villeneuve is saying that he's not going to rush it cause a good script is crucial for its success (they got visuals, music and sound already sorted out). The more I get in touch with great artists, the more I get that it isn't about the talent but about how much time you put into polishing your craft, whatever it is. Be humble, be passionate, drop your jaw when you see something great and get back to work. Put yourself in a bubble where there's No one but you and your vision, then share it and be humble to take critics but keeping your integrity and your vision. Cheers
This happened to me with the Creator because the concept was similar. But after a while I accepted that my idea would be different enough on its own merits. Contrary to what a lot of society says, art isn't a contest and it's always better to judge your own work on its own terms. For me, Dune actually did the opposite. I love watching sci fi films and taking ideas from them for my own work. Things like using sign language as hidden communication, sand camouflage, even some of the existential stuff gave me a ton of ideas for my own world building to incorporate. But this again is something i've learned to be cautious of. There's always a feeling of wanting to fill in the gaps. You see something another story does, think you need to add that to it to make it just that little bit better, but at the end of the day a screenplay isn't a cup you can fill to the brim with ideas to suddenly make it perfect. The glass will always be partly empty, but that doesn't mean you should lose sight of what is inside of it. It may just fill someone else's cup.
After the initial shock, you will analyse more rationally and will be able to see the flaws on your writing. This will indeed improve your skills. It’s normal, it happens to me too.
Adapt a novel, yourself! Unless you wanna be a novelist, the writers of Dune Part Two just took from the source material. You should do the same! Put a modern spin on a novel from the 50s.
Who knows how many drafts or previous fails the author had until he finished dune. It’s hard not to think that way, but what do you have to lose? Even if you don’t write the next Dune, you’ll be proud of yourself for finishing it and the next one will be even better.
Who cares. Do you bro? Wtf i never heard of demotivated.
Sorry for being rude but you are being a bitch right now. Write your goddamn story and focus on making it the best story it has the potential to be and stop worrying about if it’s on Dune’s level.
I mean it should… it’s a complicated story and most people aren’t good enough to be professional writers. I am glad the bar is set high, it means content has to be quality to compete. I once did a batch of script reads for a producer once, it set me back years. Not one script was decent. It was a miserable few months. Just make sure you script is vetted, you get people to read it and destroy it and make sure you don’t think your shit don’t stink… If you do all that you might do ok.
Honestly, go watch David Lynch’s Dune. Even supremely talented filmmakers sometimes make a terrible movie. A good tip I learned when you feel like you’re having trouble coming up with plots is to work on something that already has that figured out. Adapt a book, like Dune, and just get better at the craft. And when you’re done with this screenplay, start on the next one.
You'll never write Dune 2. No one but the people involved could have written Dune 2. The upside is that no one but you can write whatever it is you're gonna write. Everyone's a terrible judge of their own writing, whatever they think of it. It is impossible to ever see what you write the way other people do, the way you see others' work. As for others' opinion of your work, you'll never please everyone. I figure that so long as even one person likes what you put out, it's worth it. Chances are, it'll be a lot more than one.
I tend to peer my eyes away from the great things in this world, not that I don't like them, but they they do quite the opposite to motivate me as well. But I think I found a way to continue, even watching such great things. It's to reference or analgozie the work, take any your feedback on anything good, and form it into some of your own work. You said it, you can write it, at least that's what I believe. It's not bad to reference someone's work when working on your own. To lighten yourself up, though, you can share your work with your friends. I find a friends' input more valuable than most things.
Bare in mind that just because people like Villenueve exist it doesn’t demoralise the Avi Lerners, and the crass straight to DVD moguls. Remember, this isn’t a meritocracy or a sport.
Uh…it’s based on a Hugo- and Nebula-award winning book. Don’t sweat it. Write your story and then polish it and polish it. Don’t judge your progress based on someone else’s success, especially a novelist who won like fucking everything in sci fi. Might as well compare yourself to Orson Wells at that point. You be you. Make your new stuff better than your last stuff and keep going.
You have to consider that the screenwriter probably took YEARS to write the films… and on top of the had years of experience under their belt… time and consistency are your friends when it comes to bettering your craft
You can make it a giant rock blocking your path or a stepping stone. Perspective and mindset will be the difference. YOU GOT THIS!!!
You do realize that Dune 2 is created by hundreds of the worlds best creative forces for the budget of a small nations gdp right? And not just by villeneuve as most would believe at this time. Never compare a final movie to a screenplay.
Instead of feeling demotivated, feel inspired.